[DF] Dragonlance
 

Has anyone made a conversion of the Dragonlance setting to Dungeon Fantasy? (I'd prefer the old 2nd edition setting rather than any of that new-fangled stuff).

Mages use "Incantation magic," which is the closest to the memorization system. The three orders of magic specialize in different magic - their knowledge of all Paths are capped by the Paths they specialize in. White robes specialize in Augury and Protection, Red robes specialize in Elementalism and Mesmerism, and Black robes specialize in Necromancy and Demonology. Mages get bonuses to spell casting and extra spell slots when their moons are in a favorable position. Bard magic is not affected by

Priests follow the gods of Good, the gods of Evil or the gods of Balance. Good priests get the standard spell list in DF. Evil priests get the Unholy priest spell list. Balance priests get their own spell list which is on a need-to-do list.

Paladins and rangers can buy access to certain spells from the priest or druid list. Knights of Solamnia get their own set of special abilities based on following the Code and the Measure.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Go for emulation rather than rule to rule translation.

Memorization system can be done via "modules" of hung spells: there are a set number of points that can be allotted to spells - the wizard sets up everything - energy cost, duration, etc before hand.

Aspected Magery is something else to look into.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I don't have it handy, but I did a conversion of the magic system before GURPS DF was a seperate product.

Wizards used vancian magic and had to buy Magery as part of levelled packages based on robe color. Spells were divided into levels based on PRQ and each had their own slot for vancian modular abilities. Different colleges were barred to different robe colors with a very small number being put in a new "universal" college. I believe nobody got healing, plant, or animal.

Clerics used ritual magic. Colleges were granted per god with one to three colleges getting a +1 as appropriate.

Both used threshold magic from Thaumatology. Wizards couldn't buy those advantages free-form, but only as part of the level-packages. Threshold refill rate and calamities were somewhat affected by the moons. Clerics could buy the advantages, but they didn't have the option of exceeding the threshold unless their god deemed it worthy. Otherwise, the tap was just turned off.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I went for the "use as is" route because magic-users at low levels were the definition of useless and as both player and GM it drove me nuts.

I generalize what I did into "GURPS magic systems in D&D" which more geared to plugging in the various magic systems into D&D.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I don't have the Incantation Magic book(s), but I believe with RPM, your available "spell slots" (charms/conditionals) are taken up equally by minor cantrips and world-shaking spells. Personally, I kind of like the sort of narrative where mages can "run out" of prepared heavy-hitters and be down to cantrips, but RPM largely favors going big (or at least as big as you can reliably get away with) with your charms/conditionals. If you want to implement something like spell levels, you might consider having weak spells take up a fraction of a slot, while more powerful spells take up multiple slots.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

That's good stuff. I went with Vancian magic because I felt it captured the Dragonlance feel of "magic is hard & arbitrary because the gods say so."

I also had an eye toward running the chronicles (still on bucket list) so I wanted a big seperation between divine & arcane.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The last time I played through Dragonlance the important element appeared to be that all True Prophets must explode after they deliver their prophecies to the PCs.

Why? I don't know"why?" but it happened twice. Being a True Prophet probably counts as Terminally Ill.

Serendipity plays a major role. The only time we ever needed a lock picked we had just rescued 23 kender.

By all means have fun but don't sweat the mechanics.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Go for GURPSifying rather than emulation or rule-to-rule translation.

Just use standard GURPS magic, and play Dragonlance in the style of GURPS. Just tweak the spell list a little if you feel it necessary, then play. Minimal work needed!

Take the usual racial templates for elves, dwarves, and so on that already exist in GURPS. Modify the halfling template to kender. Come up with a couple of others like draconians. Done.

If you wanted to play in the style of D&D, you'd play D&D! Choose GURPS to play in the style of GURPS.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I would recommend strongly trimming the spell list, because the 'utilitarian, many-small-castings' nature of GURPS magic is different from the low-magic setting.

I was a Dragonlance fan too long ago to have thoughts about what kinds of magic seem to belong in the setting, but its not the kind of setting where mages are like any other kind of artisan billing by the day.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Well D&D to GURPS is closer to GURPSifying so "emulation" was likely the wrong term to use.

"Low Magic" in GURPS doesn't fit what any D&D setting that I remember.

The wiki sums up Low Magic as "The magical equivalent of home remedies. It is magic that anybody might pick up, without systematic formal study, and used in everyday life or emergencies."

It is Craft Magic, Mysteries of the Trade, Oaths, and Single Spells (instinctive or learned under stress, picked up as a knack)

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

So? It's a wiki. It's not an official source. That definition is based on the opinion of whatever individual wrote the article. "Low Magic" could just as easily refer to a setting with universal low mana, or with strict Magery caps, even if the spells and mechanics were identical to the normal rules.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

"Low magic is the magical equivalent of home remedies." and contains Craft Magic, Mysteries of the Trade, Oaths, Single Spells, and True Faith as sub listings.

That section is followed by Formulaic magic.

Also the wiki has the following references
* GURPS Fantasy 160
* GURPS Magic Items 3 pg 24
* GURPS Fantasy pg 162-3
* GURPS Fantasy pg 147

So it did shuffle things around a bit but it was likely to make them flow a little better.

Assuming mana based magic that would likely fall under High Fantasy (Fantasy pg 6)

I say mana based magic because "Unified Metaphysical Theories / Magical Psi" (GURPS Powers pg 181) states "In some settings, “magic” and “psi” both tap the same energies, in one case by study and formal disciplines, in the other by raw talent and willpower."

The Fanmade Five Earths, All in a Row setting mixes this idea with Roma Arcana's idea that spirits rather than some energy power magic. This is how Fantasy Earth has magic and spells even though it is No Mana.

GURPS is not just a toolbox but a lego set.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

All the aspects are easily emulable, BUT I would suggest to trim down the many allignment-based rules: Dragonlance magic was a headache because appartently in the '80 it was perfectly sound to constantly track a complex three Moon phase calendar on top of the nonsensical 2Ed rules... Only to have Black robes incapable of throwing a fireball.

Same goes for Knight of Solamnia: 3 different classes for the same character archetype.. And for what I remember the Knight of the Rose was basically OP.

...also somebody said kender?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I will say that I didn't know this came from (read: was copied word-for-word from. The wiki probably really shouldn't do that.) an actual GURPS book, so I'll rephrase my original point: You're reading far too much into the phrase "low magic". It's not being used a term of art. When people say "low-magic", they just mean a setting without much magic. They almost certainly have absolutely no idea it was ever used in a GURPS book with a specific definition.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Actually, 1Ed dominated the 80s with 2Ed starting to come out in 1989 but even then rule incompatibility was an issue. If you tried to have Oriental Adventures and regular character together the Western characters came off as underpowered. The Unearthed Arcana upped the power of the Western characters and added to the rule bloat.

As the Gamespy article "Magic & Memories: The Complete History of Dungeons & Dragons - Part III" relates D&D during 2Ed became highly Balkanized with settings like Forgotten Realms and Planescape having every widening and incompatible rule systems.

The Complete (insert name of class here) Handbooks just aggravated the problem.

Regarding the kender that showed up in Dragon #101; love the expression on the magic-users' face — classic "I should have stayed in bed" look.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I think what prevented this was not the lack of spells, but more the lack of magi and their stigma. Certainly fistandantalus kept his apprentices casting all the time as we saw when Raistlin studied under him. And when Raistlin was the "red robed trickster" with Tas, he cast quite frequently.

GURPS spell economy is based on middle-classed wizards having steady work. That's just not the world setting. I don't think it's a reflection of the spells.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Depends on what you're going for. For me, I'm leaning WAY into the alignment. Dragons are color-coded for your convenience. Moons rule wizards. I made an excel spreadsheet which tracks the moons based on the circle-chart from the 1e handbook. It shows waxing waning, high, low, and each conjunction. It'll even roll the D8s if you want.

The thing I really wanted to emulate for alignment-based rules in wizards, though, was that black-robes rise to power faster while white gained more power in the long run.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

That can be emulated by the black-robes having a higher odds of death by adventurer.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I'm just using the definition for "Low Magic" GURPS Fantasy gives us. "Low magic" on wikipedia has a totally different meaning (relating to Satanic magic).

GURPS uses "High Fantasy" to describe rare magic settings. What magic exists is focused in a handful of items or people or limited to deities.

For example, Greek Mythology would be "High Fantasy" as spell casting by even demigods is next to nil. What magic does exist is the product of the gods or potions. Actual spell casting is effectively absent.

Low fantasy by contrast is the setting where magic is common and a part of everyday life. Merlin-1 is a Low fantasy setting.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

You're either overlooking or ignoring my actual point, and then the rest of the reply is just completely irrelevant. The context of the original post is very clear that by "low magic", they just mean that magic is rare in the setting. They're not using any specific, esoteric definition of the term. It's just the word low being used as a normal adjective.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Alignment is one of those things that IMHO doesn't really transfer to GURPS very well. For example, Pirates are (generally) Chaotic Evil but in GURPS they, odds are, will have Code of Honor (Pirate) which D&D would consider a Lawful Trait.

The Dragon article "For King and Country" (Dragon #101 Sept 1985) explored going with a trait system and the reasons the alignment tended to have issues.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The same happened in 3e though: in some groups, players came brandishing random poorly-playtested third-party supliments. If you leveraged the loopholes (or cross-referenced multiple books from different sources) you could do all kinds of strange things. And in every edition of D&D there are all kinds of house rules and eccentric readings of the core books.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

All Knights in 2e started with 2d10 hit points at first levels. Knights of the Sword were basically fighters, Crown were clerics (and in 1e had d8s for hit dice), and Rose were Paladins. They had to move through the orders, with level, stat and roleplayed mission and behaviour requirements. I'm not sure that, for the XP cost and likely hit to the stats that mattered in adventuring that they were particularly over-powered.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

But some of the problems were from a straight reading of the rules.

As the wiki (with references) points out Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers suggestions of requiring "heroes to spend $40+ per point for “guild training” before they can “level up” and gain new abilities" is a majorly bad idea as demonstrated by AD&D1e's 1500 gp/level/week (DMG1e pg 86) "Once a character has points which are equal to or greater than the minimum number necessary to move upward in experience level, no further experience points can be gained until the character actually gains the new level."

The Dragon #97 (May 1985) article "Only Train When You Gain" outlined why this was (and is) a bad idea: "The DM, who sees that he is losing the players’ interest, realizes he must do something. It is at this point that he takes the first step toward a Monty Haul campaign. Whether from the players’ urgings to do something and stop being "“unfair",” or as the DM’s own idea, the next group of orcs the characters kill happened to be guarding a chest full of 8,000 gp, instead of the normal copper or silver, and a magic item that can be sold for additional gold. By some coincidence, this is just enough money to pay for everyone’s training."

"If gold is given away in large amounts, magic generally flows much more freely as well, allowing characters to grow ultra-powerful and creating a Monty-Haul campaign that quickly becomes tiresome for both DM and players". Wise GMs should just ignore this idea as it was bad was dropped in AD&D2 (1989) for a reason.

Why somebody thought suggesting a GURPSifyed rule that resulted into so many broken campaigns that it was abandoned over 20 years ago is beyond me.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I disagree. Simply use it as written. Acknowledge that it's not a great system to begin with. Embrace its flaws and move on.

It's like using steel pieces to buy steel armor. Makes no sense. Totally usable.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

It is beyond my ability to understand human mind why one would use obsolete, abusable, fictional and nonsensical concepts like "classes", "allignment" and "levels" in a system that left them in the dust decades ago.. (see also Cyberpunk 2077).

Those are the most atrocius ways to arrange and balance gameplay and party dynamics.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

While I totally agree, "classes" and "levels" are an easy way to get people into the game. Various MMOs have tried open skills system like GURPS and they tend to feature on the Youtube Death of a game series.

The problem is it creates the situation of why don't high level character to go low level are and just one shot all the things causing issues for the locals?

For example, in WOW I took a Draenei Death Knight back to the Draenei starting zone when the Death Knight first appeared to level up the secondary skills (First aid, herbs, and potions). The DK was OP back then and having a Draenei as one just cranked up the OP factor to 11 even at level. In a low level zone it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

"For King and Country" explained that "alignment" was a quick way to address the issue of why players were killing what often as not were thinking creatures - if your character didn't 'put them down' odds are it would "wreak whatever havoc it possibly could on society until it was destroyed."

"In the real world, good and evil are invented concepts. Societies label their own values as good, and those of the enemy (or the threatening or the unknown) as evil."

Threads like gamegrene's When The Moral Compass Goes Haywire show how the very concept of alignment breaks down in anything resembling a "realistic" campaign.

Even the most "Evil" villains in of history generally did not set out to be the opposite of what they knew was right and good. They were the "heroes" of their own "story".

Traits such those used in GURPS give both the players and DM a better idea of what a character's behavior might be. In GURPS terms Vlad Tepes Dracula had Bloodlust (Turks, Boyars, 'Criminals'); Code of Honor (Pirate); Honesty; Intolerance, Turks; Sadism (9); Sense of Duty (to 'honest' people of Walachia); Vow (Uphold the faith/protect Walachia). Doesn't that give you a much better picture of how to handle him than simply saying CE or perhaps LE?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Eh, you just gate things by total xp, not level. The real problem is that RPGs can handle balance issues with a GM, and MMOs can't, so they need to balance everything through the character creation system, and the difficulty of balancing depends on how many interactions you're looking at. For example, let's say a level-based system grants a character 6 choices between two powers, and you have two classes. That means you have a total of 128 possible combinations. Now, merge those two and eliminate the level-gating so you have a character with 6 total powers out of 24. That's 134,596 possible combinations.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The thing with relying on the GM to handle balance issues is you can have adventures where the GM has to constantly play "nanny" to keep the party from becoming a bloody smear.

Take, Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1) for example. The very idea that a Level 10–14 party could take on what amounts to a goddess is jaw dropping unreal.

Lolth is insane enough with just the stats in the book: AC -10 (yes negative 10; AC 10 is very roughly akin to Dodge 8)/ - 2; 88 HP; had what amounts to a Toxic attack and a Binding attack. Magic resist of 70% (roughly between MR 11 and 12 based on the percentage); "able to heal herself at will, up to thrice/day"; "not affected by weapons which are not magical, silver does her no harm (unless enchanted to at least +1), and cold, electrical and gas attack forms cause only one-half damage." Then there were all the Clerical (35 at 16 level) and Magic-User (25 at 14th level) spells she could cast. And she had psionic abilities of 266 on top of all that. ("minor devotions of body equilibrium, clairvoyance, domination, and the major sciences of dimension walking, mind bar, molecular rearrangement, and probability travel". All at 16th level of ability/experience)

Throw in the powers form Dieties and Demigods and even a level 20 party that faced her would be lucky to survive the encounter even if they were at full strength (which given what else was there they wouldn't be).

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Lolth as written would be in danger of going down in a single round against a level 10-14 party. You underestimate just how powerful high level AD&D characters were.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I think you over estimate the power of a AD&D1ed 10-14 party. Unless she is played like Skeleton out of the old 1980s He-man cartoon she should not only hold her own but totally wreck the party. Especially given the way that module was set up they would be down on spells.

Deities and Demigods (which came out the same year) added these abilities to her powerset:

Command ("no saving throw vs. this divine ability"): Mind Control [50]
Comprehend languages: Gift of Tongues and Gift of Letters combined (special spell)
Detect alignment: NA in GURPS
Gate: Planar Summons (spell) - limited to mythos
Geas: Great Geas (spell)
Quest (no saving throw): Lesser Geas (spell)
Teleport: Jumper [100] and Warp [100]
True seeing: Aura (spell)

More over in GURPS Lolth would likely become even more ridiculous per Objects of Power - if items made by deities change Sanctity and the deity themselves should on par with running into a Major Object of Power. Kind of hard for your Cleric to do anything in what, for them, is a No Sanctity area.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

That's _Skeletor_. I always thought Hordak was more fun. I have no idea why Skeletor keeps showing up on Facebook but better him than the Joker.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I think it is because he is so easy to make a meme out of - supremely powerful but also supremely incompetent. I agree with you with regards to the Joker - he has been over used to the point that it is getting annoying use some of Batman's other villains.

I like the version of Skeletor in the latest He-man cartoon where he actually takes over the planet. Allies that don't have rocks for brains, confident but not to where he makes dumb moves.

Back to the topic. Real old D&D wasn't well balanced and if you translate many things to GURPS their power goes up.

For example, I'm surprised the first official GURPS version of a Lich doesn't have a phylactery. The Dragon #26 article “Blueprint for a Lich” shows that a lich effectively has at least Unkillable 2 and likely Unkillable 3 - as long as you can't find their phylactery. Totally destroy the original body? The Lich just takes over a preprepared corpse near the phylactery and once it fully acclimates to the new body it goes back to what ever it was doing.

And Lolth is more powerful than one of those things as all deities have Unkillable 3 outside of their home plane of existence per Deities and Demigods. The 'Deities get everything from their followers' mechanic in GURPS Religion ups the power — as long as they have worshipers a deity cannot truly be defeated much less killed. ("For King and Country" suggested something like this way back in the 1980s)

Revenge? Unless they are petty, beings with Unkillable 3 will play on people's ignorance. if people think they are destroyed then they will attribute the actions of the being to that of minons or Fanatical followers leaving the being to do what ever it was doing before the party "killed" it.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Point is that A LOT of nonsense in the original D&D has been embedded in RPGs and, when mixed with lazely lifted stereotypes from LOTR you got a pretty good picture of "Standard" Fantasy...

Of which Dragonlance is a clear example (If I remember correctly in one book there is also a mention of Christmas). Just remember that the main character is a "Bad Guy" whose main personality trait is being an insufferable a*hole but which every body is in love with.

D&D power levelling was (at least up to 3.5/Pathfinder, no idea on newer releases) totally bonkers, to the point that "I defeated the Terrasque with only 3 of my 5 rings" was almost a meme.

The only pass I can give to those pesky level/class /allignment rigidity is when those concepts are elevated to Cosmic absolutes... And then you start to get really weird and interesting stuff, like Planescape or Wrath of the Immortals that took all this and pushed it to 11 to say something a bit more meaningful about our daily boring lives.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The power creep is real. 5th edition character are more capable than 3.5, but they have far, far fewer magic items. There's more emphasis on the characters' innate abilities and less on the gear they carry.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Alignment can be a great trope, but it needs to be integrated into the setting as in Three Hearts and Three Lions or George and the Dragon (not sure about the Elric books). If its just a vague "goodies or baddies?" plus mechanics which imply it is a cosmic force, it fails.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The conflict between Law and Chaos is very central to the Elric books (though no necessarily everything connected to Moorcock's "Eternal Champion").

Note that like original D&D Elric doesn't "do" Good and Evil where Three Hearts pretty much makes Law and Good and Evil and Chaos the same things. Elric mostly ends up rooting for Balance and is pretty directly responsible for why so many old Greyhawk NPCs were Neutral.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

5th edition characters are way less capable than 3.5e. Sure, they probably start out better at low levels, but level scaling in 3.5e was crazy.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The thing is in AD&D1st Alignment, was a cosmic force as each alignment had its own language.

"For King and Country" pointed out that " Each and every intelligent being would be motivated by some absolute cause which would be perceived by all as the same thing. Thus, a paladin not only would believe himself to be good, but would be seen as good even by his enemies."

By AD&D1 standards James Bond would be an evil character (the 00 denotes him as an assassin) but he certainly not see "that woe and suffering are desirable ends in and of themselves." Few evil characters do.

Also many times the official alignments just didn't make sense. Take Tiamat, for example. She is given LE in 1ed MM and yet 1ed Deities and Demigods effectively tells she is the Babylon Tiamat - whose domain was Chaos.

The Greek section is similarly bonkers. Many of the deiteis given "good" alignments were evident Neutral in later editions. Hades got Neutral Evil but that isn't supported in the actual mythology either.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The problem with 1e through 3e D&D (the editions I know) is that they had concepts like alignment languages, Protection Against Good, and alignment planes which suggest that alignment is built deeply into the world, but they did not have a coherent theory of what alignment is or fit it into the world. Part of this may be that in the early days they were scared of working in explicitly Christian elements and setting off another Satanic Panic, part of it may be the omnium gatherum inspirations they used which included both dualistic alignments and alignments as uncaring forces. This lead to issues like the eternal "is killing orc babies Good?" debate and the "lawful ******* / lawful stupid" paladin.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

4th edition did not use the 9 alignment axis (it had CE, E, N, G, LG) and didn't have abilities that detected or relied on alignment, making it ignorable. 5th edition went back to the 9 alignment axis but also doesn't generally have abilities that detect or rely on alignment, and more recently they've stopped listing alignment on creatures, so it's getting increasingly de-emphasized.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

It didn't help that examples of "proper" handling of alignment were basic FUBAR the Player. "It's not easy being good" (Dragon #51) by Roger Moore even had an example of a Paladin getting messed up because of the alignment system. The article basicly delt with the female and child surivors of a take out the werewolves problem mission. With lycanthropy you have a major problem as you have somebody with MPD as seen in the wolfman pictures ie Talbot going ' Please lock me up or kill me before I turn into a rampaging monster again and kill somebody.'

The Paladin knowing that there was no way to cure the poor wretchs and come next full moon they would terrorize the countryside had them painlessly executed at which point he got hosed by the alignment system because since it was daylight he had killed 'innocent' women and children. And this was an actual example of how to use alignment!

To be fair many characters in comic books and cartoons of the 1960s through 1980s tended to be Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Crazy. Then you just had Icky Creepy.

Take the Silver Age Superman - a paragon of LG if there ever was one. Then you get into some of the stories...

"Have you ever wished you could see a grieving Man of Steel pushed to the limits of his sanity, having a make-out session with a robot, trolling beauty contests for Lois lookalikes and tricking a woman into marrying him under the pretense of being someone else? If so, then Superman #215 (Apr 1969) has the story you've been looking for." Nightwing in his Confessions of a Superman fan page

Let's not forget he "watches Brainiac and Luthor kill two people and because he really, really doesn't like the victims, turns a blind eye while they haul off the bodies (and even says, "Thanks")"

I should mention that Michael A. Stackpole lamblated the D&D alignment system in his Pulling Report

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I'm surprised the alignment mechanic has lasted this long — it has long been maligned by players.

Yahtzee in his review of Fable 3 shows why labeling things "good" and "evil" is nonsense:

"I thought the game would end when the evil king was overthrown, but when the revolution batters down his door he basically says, "Fine, you be king then. Oh, and by the way, an evil black primordial slime is going to come and slaughter us all one year from now. Toodle-e-oo." (...) You're given a number of decisions to make as ruler and must choose whether to continue your brother's evil policies in order to raise the arbitrary sum of six million gold coins required to fight off the black goo after the year's up, or blow the entire treasury on making the lives of your citizens happy if short, the Logan's Run option."

Based on his review description every policy what would prevent your subjects from becoming Shxogoth chow are "evil". As Yahtzee put it "why can't we keep the evil policies until the Shoggoth has come and gone, then reverse them all? Surely one year of hardship is better than one year of picnics followed by Armageddon. But no, not an option. Castle Albion was apparently built on a leaking gas main."

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Nothing surprising about that, really. Both Superman and Batman started out as (relatively) realistic, for comics, vigilantes. That is, both would use lethal force, intimidation, and disregard legalities in pursuit of what they considered a higher good.

Since comics were aimed at (or were perceived to be aimed at) kids, that was eventually changed to a more 'black and white' moral arrangement, eventually becoming very simplistic, with contradictions that even kids could perceive.

It got loser again in the 70s and 80s when comics started being pitched more to a teenaged audience. But (and this touches on alignment, too), it rapidly became clear that the lack of black and white moral rules also led to story problems, as became somewhat blatant in the 90s.

Alignment in RPG settings serves as a way to make moral choices something other than personal preferences and 'my side' (and to justify the intense violence). If morality is purely the creation of the people and societies it applies to, it really doesn't mean anything, and you end up fairly quickly with 'power/winning is what really matters'. If morality is going to matter at all, it can't be 100% relative and subjective, because if it is Enlightenment logic will dissolve it away, leaving untrammeled self-interest.

('Murder hoboes' is a cliché for a reason.)

But if the objective alignment system ignores the complicated messiness of realistic situations, you end up with situations where the PCs are not able to distinguish between 'necessary evil' and 'blatant immorality', like the difference between killing a lycanthrope to save other people, or killing someone because they are inconvenient, or acting purely out of revenge and calling it 'justice', as opposed to genuinely seeking justice (but what precisely constitutes justice?). Among Palladium gamers, it's a cliché that a Principled alignment character (the highest good alignment) will get the party into more trouble than a Miscreant character (sort of their version of milder evil), because the Principled character, like the Paladin example, is obligated to behave in ways that ignore practicality.

(Of course it's in these gray areas that the most interesting character conflicts can exist, because it's awfully easy to go from 'necessary evil' to 'convenient' while lying to yourself. As Jim Butcher pointed out about moral conflicts, gray does exist. But he likened it to a software art program, where when you mix black and white to get gray, you reach what is effectively black well before you get all the way to the numbers that officially define 'black' in the program.)

Is slavery evil? Of course. Should a Good PC oppose it? Of course. Is a prisoner condemned to a chain gang for a crime a slave? Well, in the strictest technical sense yes, but suddenly things get complicated. What was the crime? Does it justify the punishment? If the answer is no, should the PC free the prisoner? What will the practical consequences for the PC's friends and family be if he does? Suddenly the simple rule has gotten very messy and complicated, but that doesn't mean the simple rule is invalid or wrong, just that it's messy when it comes into contact with reality.

Or to put it another way, is Batman responsible for the deaths the Joker inflicts because Batman refuses to terminate the Joker? It doesn't have an easy answer, and either 'yes' or 'no' leads to messy uncomfortable implications.

The alignment system endures because it actually serves a function. How well it serves it is another issue.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

In practice, it's irrelevant, because, given the nature of comic books, a graveyard would hold the Joker for little longer than an asylum cell does.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

You'd be surprised by how many ardent defenders it has -- people who insist it's important for roleplaying, that the meaning of the alignments is actually well defined, etc.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Two points: you are assuming that alignment = morality or righteousness, but in many of the inspirations of D&D the cosmic forces were amoral and a wise person kept as far away from them as possible. This is where the idea of Neutrals seeking balance comes from.

And what systems other than D&D have an alignment mechanic?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

"For King and Country" (1985) touched on that; alignment worked best in settings where the motivations of kings and churches were unimportant other than offering bounties 'to take care of the baddies'. War and politics were borderline non existent and if they did exist they were so overly simple that they were more campy than an episode of the 1960s Batman TV show.

In the absence of actual laws and religious beliefs, alignment was a way to tell a player when he was getting out of line. But even the definitions of what the alignments changed and what alignment the gods had also changed.

As Moore's "it's not Easy Being Good" article shows alignment could be easily misused - even by people that supposedly "understand" the system: "Killing the captives could well be the only alternative the Paladin is left with, yet if done the DM might say it was evil and remove the player’s alignment and status as a Paladin."

Even before players grow out of this simple Silver Age mentality alignment is more of a hinderance than a help because what an alignment means has to be defined. But "how does one define concepts that in the real world have no absolute meaning? There is no way to do it except to choose a particular value system and declare that it applies universally to the gaming universe."

How can Tiamat who is the embodiment of Chaos be Lawful Evil as Deities and Demigods goes out of its way to talk about Taimat's battle with her son Marduk but ignores the fact that in the Babylon mythology Marduk and his siblings had gone off and murdered her husband Apsu to usurp his throne.

Another example is in regards to Athena and Medusa. Athena turned Medusa into the snake haired thing for Medusa being raped in her temple by Poseidon because Medusa 'desecrated Athena's sacred space'. The fanfic "The Watchman" has Rorschach read Athena the riot act for not only that but giving Perseus the means to kill Medusa in her sleep.

And yet Athena is given the alignment Lawful Good in the 1ed of Deities and Demigods?! On what planet and using what official definition is that acceptable behavior for LG?!

And people wonder why in some early games Paladins acted like Kore in the webcomic Goblins and kept all their Paladin abilities and alignment.

GURPS Religion used more general terms like Benevolent, Malevolent, Meddlesome, Indifferent, Observant, Oblivious, Forthright, Mysterious, Codal, and/or Random

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Palladium has an alignment characteristic though they're more like personaility profiles (of course even in D&D Good v. Evil is morality, Law v. chaos is personaility profile). You get more or less XP for playing your alignment properly.

Chivalry & Sorcery 1e had an alignment characteristic rated from 1-20 measring how in line with honorable and churchly behavior you were. If you let PCs pick their alignment number it was alright as a statement of how they intended to play their characters. The early suggestion that you rolled it randomly on a D20 was pretty much a non-starter. Over 4 more editions it has evolved first to "piety" and then to "spiritulality" which determiens how likely you are to get miraculous aid. You may even track "current spirit" pts now.

Of course all Star Wars rpgs have had thire Light v. Dark mechnisms and their imitators tend to imitate that too.

Lots of more modern games have some sort of "corruption" mechanic. They just don't have the opposite of "corruption".

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Pendragon rates characters on each of the seven cardinal virtues and deadly sins...

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Sounds similar in some respects to the Resistance roll in GURPS for certain mental disadvantages. I look back at Classic and wonder why allowing higher IQ to allow easier resistance of certain mental disadvantages wasn't seen as a problem. The 4e mechanic is far better as it allows different degrees within the same character.

Daffy Duck in 'Ducking the Devil' (1957) is a prime example of how a GURPS-like mechanic work better than an alignment. After bringing in the Tasmanian Devil in (and admitting "I -am- a coward. A craven scared to death coward" in the process) one of the bills falls into the cage and Daffy goes berserk saying "Its mine, mine, mine." and beats the snot out of the Tasmanian Devil. "I may be a coward but I am a -greedy- littlecoward."

In D&D terms there is simply not enough to put an alignment on Daffy from one 10 minutes short but witha trait system you can give him two traits right after the bat Coward and Greed. Assigning 9 and 6 to the resistance you have a Daffy that behave much the way he does in later cartoons - especially when his greed overwhelms any sense of self preseravation.

Interestingly Sfdebris has a play through on one of the Star War games as a light side Sith shows that "evil" characters can do good things. Before Disney did the sequels there was Kreia who took a deep look at the two sides of the force and found both wanting though in different ways.

Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series is another example of how alignment is setting dependent - the Offices of Death and Evil have very specific behavior requirements of Neutral and Evil but are Zane and Perry really these alignments by the D&D system?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

There was actually a plot line where the Joker found a pure version of the Lazarus Pit. He and Batman killed each other near this pit and they came back with amnesia.

It was implied that the Joker had (has?) an ability similar to Vandal Savage in the movie Doom where Cheetah calls his claim he is immortal and rips out his throat with her claws. He falls down bleeding all over the floor and then gets up and casually hits Cheetah in the face with the back of his hand.

So, yeh in regular continuity DC gave the Joker a variant of Unkillable 2. Wonderful. /s

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Honestly, that doesn't seem that far off to me. Situations like this are extremely difficult to judge the morality of, such that they can go either way. Consider similar situations. An innocent townsperson is being controlled by a cursed amulet, and the Paladin is aware of this. In the resulting fight, is it acceptable for the Paladin to just shove his sword through the innocent's chest, or should his vows require him to instead try to subdue the remove the amulet? If a reliable divination reveals a newborn will grow up to be a genocidal monster, is it acceptable for the Paladin to snatch it from its mother's arms and dash its brains out against a wall, or should he try to figure out a different way to ensure the prophecy doesn't come to pass? In the example case, the Paladin could have made arrangements to have the women and children restrained whenever there was going to be a full moon (or however involuntary shifting worked in that game).

Of course, were I GM and found myself in this situation (likely due to poor planning, as I'm not enough of a jerk to purposefully put a player in such a Catch 22 situation), if I decided executing the victims violated the Paladin's code, I wouldn't just let him/her go through with it and then say "Congratulations! You're now a Fighter with no Bonus Feats*!" Rather, I'd either just outright tell the player "That violates your vows as a Paladin, are you sure you want to go through with it?" or have the player roll against a relevant skill (probably Religion) to figure out if this was a violation... and on anything but a Critical Failure would probably say something along the lines of "You aren't sure if this behavior would be acceptable for a Paladin, perhaps you should consult an expert."

*Which is something I said to a player of a Samurai character who violated his code of Bushido, but I had given ample warning beforehand, and even let him take back the action that led to loss of his class features, now that he knew I was serious. He abandoned the character and made a different one not long later.


All that said, I'm not a huge fan of alignment systems. I do kind of like them as cosmic forces, but where a character still has sufficient volition to go against type. Of course, that's likely to end up with the type of setting where such forces can be summarized with "Good isn't always good, and Evil isn't always evil."

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I don't think the Virtues and Sins of Pendragon are like an alignment system, they are more like advantages and disadvantages. But they do show that if you start from a clear definition of what those cosmic forces are, its much easier to make a coherent set of rules for alignment with them.

Moving back to the original topic, it seems like the three schools of wizardry and the chromatic v. metallic dragons are the key 'alignment-related' elements of the Dragonlance setting. Representing those is much more important than converting Protection from Evil into GURPS mechanics.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Both of which really just have to do with which gods you serve (the schools of wizardry have to do with the moons Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari, the dragon types are Takhisis and Paladine).

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Which bring we back on the absurdity of allignments: in Dragonlance (and every other fantasy setting ever) Gods are based on the Olympians: fallible, emotional, petty even... Very mortal and relatable and yet they are tangled in a Cosmic duality that works with a morality system totally "alien" to everything else.

I'm a little biased but i like to put the blame on that catholic fanfiction about norse myths that's always popoing out in a way or another.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Is it a cosmic duality? Or is it really just "In this setting, worshippers of X and worshippers of Y are good because that's how we defined evil and good".

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Not The Dragon and the George (fourteenth-century religions just as speculative as in our world), Videssos (impersonal dualism with speculations about personal gods and prophets), the Hyborean Age, Lovecraft's vision of the Cthulhu Mythos (other scribes imported Christian ideas) ... I suspect Tékumel is different too.

Its hard to underestimate how much the late 20th century setting designers in the USA were influenced by Protestantism regardless of their personal convictions and practices (including retellings of world myths by 19th and early 20th century western Christians). People coming from a Christian background tended to read myths from other cultures in a certain way, such as seeing Set as a figure of evil. And the mid-20th-century stories of indifferent cosmic forces added to the mix.

But we are getting off topic. Dragonlance is not a very sophisticated setting, but it can be modelled without having to solve these general problems.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

The Middle Earth Role-Playing game (MERP), at least in second edition, has 'Alignment Role Traits,' which are vague and have a range of possible axes like 'Good....Neutral....Evil,' 'Free Enterprise....Neutral....Socialism,' or 'Metaphorical....Neutral....Literal.' How important the traits are in-game I'm not sure, as I read about the game but never played it, and the book isn't as well-organized as I'd like for this purpose (it honestly looks like the trait is just there because they thought it was supposed to be there, so it's being used as one of the ways your psychology is defined, along with 'Personality Role Traits' and 'Motivation Role Traits'). Maybe Rolemaster has more information, but I either don't have books for that, or do but can't find them.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

They have no mechanical weight at all. They're there to assist players in defining their character and deciding how they might act. There might be some bonuses for 'good roleplaying' in there somewhere, but that would be the only formal support for those traits.

I'm pretty sure they were put in there because the designers thought that characters should be more than just a bundle of bonuses, spells, and gear.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

As King and Country pointed out the Paladin is an idealized version of what at the end of the day is a fighter who "hypocritically preaches respect for all life, while a value system he would more realistically possess, that of religious intolerance, determines his actions."

The Paladins of the Scarlet Crusade in WoW still have their Paladin powers even though they go around killing anyone (man, woman, child) that they believe is afflicted with the curse of undeath.

Samurai are much in the same boat though while they didn't live up to the ideal Bushido was not what the WWII propaganda film Know Your Enemy, Japan tried to paint it as either - "sanctioned double dealing as an art to be cultivated". Shogun (based on the story of William Adams) is closer to the reality.

GURPS Japan has Bushido outlined as
* die rather than fail in task.
* commit ritual suicide without hesitation if ordered to do so.
* answer any challenge or insult to his lord.
* always be polite to his equals and superiors
* cannot overlook disrespect from a social inferior; such disrespect is usually punished by death.

That last one is why one of the Samurai lops off the head of a peasant in Shogun. They were original Lawful but could be any alignment from 3.5 on.

In Deities and Demigods the "worthy" Orcs and Goblins fight in their own Valhalla. Each race claims they are always the winner in these battles.

Yahtzee in his review of computer games has said he has no use for moral choice systems as you ether had to be either an effective LG Mary Sue or CE Murder Hobo to get the "best" endings.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Exactly: the whole situation boils down to simply this.
While considering philosophical and ethical question of alignments is fun, it's clearly overthinking something that was never meant to be that deep.
In the end "Evil Gods" are needed because Fantasy needs violent action, and this is the simplest way to have "Evil minions" that can be mindlessly killed without a second thought.

...the fact then that those evil minions are almost always part of some "evil races" and/or "evil society" with troubling representation is a can of worms way over the intended scope of this thread.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Dragonlance does try to sidestep some of the uncomfortable implications of the Bad Guy Race Born To Be Killed trope by introducing one that is artificially created for that role. Are Draconians really people with a broad spectrum of feelings, the potential for redemption, etc? Maybe, but I don't recall ever seeing it in the dozens of books that I admit I haven't read in thirty years. Even if they are, living with the knowledge that your BBEG creators plan for you to meet violent death sooner rather than later as evidenced by the thoughtful inclusion of various adverse death effects like turning to stone to disarm your killer or just blowing up or something has got to mess with a guy's head.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

It's been a while for me too, but I *think* the Lost Chronicles triology (which fills in the gaps in the original Chronicles trilogy) had some chapters from a Draconian's point of view, and from what I remember they didn't seem to be "always evil" or whatever the D&D-speak was. That trilogy was published a couple of decades after the original though, so it's entirely possible the authors realised the problems with the alignment system themselves and tried to "correct" it in the narrative.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Whenever a setting tries to use 'Evil' as a separate organizing principle, on its own, various contradictions emerge almost inevitably. The Dragonlance setting has the gods of Good and Evil portrayed as 'necessary opposites' rather than the idea of evil as a parasite or corruption of Good. That produces weird situations where freaky behavior patterns emerge.

For ex, the Black Wizards have their own codes and rules that they follow...but an organization dedicated to evil for its own sake would not. The membership would be driven by self-interest unless forced to abide by a stronger power. As Tolkien observed, 'evil is non-cooperative'. Takhisis does eventually betray her fellow dark gods, but in practice you would expect that constantly from all of them.

To use another fictional illustration of why this kind of contradiction happens, consider the Sith from the Star Wars decanonized 'legends' stories. The premise is that the Sith inevitably end up betraying each other, and this lets the Jedi overcome them even when the Sith have the edge tactically. So Darth Bane sets up his 'Rule of Two' to constrain and harness that tendency.

The idea is that there can be at any time only 2 Sith, a master and an apprentice. The apprentice, when he or she thinks they are strong enough, is supposed to kill the master, assume the senior position, and train a new apprentice to keep the lineage going. If the apprentice challenges the master and fails, well, that proves the apprentice was too weak and needed to be replaced anyway. If the apprentice overcomes the master it means the apprentice was now stronger and the Sith get stronger.

Of course, this requires the Sith to display a (at least potentially) good trait: self-abnegation in the service of a higher cause. The current Sith lord must be prepared to train and instruct an apprentice, knowing that sooner or later the apprentice will try to kill him. Why do it? It makes the Sith as an order stronger and advances their revenge on the Jedi.

Of course that contradicts the stated nature of the dark side of the Force. Bane and other Sith lords acknowledged that the Dark Side was all about power for the sake of power, self-aggrandizement, holding power and coveting power.

Which means that a Sith Lord who has done away with his master ought, in the nature of the Dark Side, refuse to train an apprentice in the first place. There's nothing in it for him! What does he care if the Sith lineage continues after his death? He's dead at that point, not his problem! Why would he care about revenge on the Jedi order for stuff that happened centuries before he was born, to the point of sacrificing his life for it? That's not in his interest!

It makes no sense for a character to be intentionally devoted to 'evil for the sake of evil'. The concept is almost gibberish.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Apprentices are extremely useful to have around. Not even a Sith can be in two places at once, and almost by definition they're constantly at work scheming. Is there a danger? Sure. But as far as they're concerned, either they buy into the plan or they just don't believe their apprentice could ever grow strong enough to defeat them. There are two much bigger weak links in the Rule of Two in my opinion: The possibility of one of them turning to the light, and the possibility of both of them dying at the same time. Obviously, both of these were involved in the final destruction of the Sith.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

"Good wins because Evil is stupid" isn't a trope I'm particularly fond of, honestly. Outside of cosmic forces, evil people are basically in a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, but with a degree of iteration - while they may never find themselves in a position to cooperate with someone they've previously betrayed, their new fair-weather friends may be aware of their history. Of course, there's also the fact that, outside of cosmic forces, "evil" people generally think of themselves as good.

With cosmic forces in play, well, that right there is your "stronger power" forcing them to work together, even if some degree of betrayal is allowed (but, again, someone with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder probably isn't going to be trusted). If you've got Evil Gods of roughly comparable power, and without some Evil Ubergod over all of them, a policy akin to Mutually Assured Destruction can keep them in line (or having all the gods bound to a Vengeance Pact, so that if any one of them betrays another all those that remain will be required to gang up on and destroy the betrayer). Or just keep in mind the gods are also in the above Prisoner's Dilemma.


As for the Sith, I suspect those with Force Sensitivity have some sort of compulsion to spread their knowledge - it just feels wrong not to have someone training under you. The Jedi use this impulse to try to make the Galaxy a better place; the Sith use it to create useful pawns to further their own goals. And the more powerful the potential pupil, the stronger the compulsion, hence why Sith tend to get apprentices that end up capable of overthrowing them. Alternatively, there's a survivor bias - only powerful apprentices are able to survive the sorts of schemes their masters get them into, so masters tend to go through a lot of apprentices until they get one powerful enough to both survive the schemes and overthrow them. There's also probably the classic "that would never happen to me" trap humans are naturally inclined to fall into at play here.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Evil is stupid is a bad trope, but the treacherous jerks are all over the place, be they in our personal lives or positions of high power. Sometimes they run out of people to burn, and sometimes they don't, but its satisfying to see that moment when they do, so we keep on returning to it in our stories. The sad thing is that "of course everyone sees that they're a treacherous jerk" doesn't happen as often as you'd think in theory.

I'm not actually convinced of that. I think people do think of themselves as "Justified", but that's different from thinking that everything they're doing is altruistic in some sense.

I will say that antagonists who see themselves as altruists working towards a goal that will help a group of people are more interesting than those who don't, but interesting is not the same as realistic.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

I won't deny it's satisfying to watch such people tear each other apart, but the idea they basically can't work together is laughable. Don't have the villains lose because they were too busy fighting each other - have them descend into fighting each other because they're losing (although the first still works, if they're being manipulated into infighting by some force outside of their own organization).
EDIT: I'll note this isn't so much about realism, as it is wanting the actions of the heroes to matter.

This is true. See also the "that would never happen to me" trap I mentioned earlier.

I think most people think of "being good" as "doing what's right," with "right" generally being a nebulous idea that is essentially "whatever I happen to agree with at the moment*." While it's certainly true most people consider altruism to be "right" (or, at least, those forms of altruism they happen to agree with), that certainly doesn't mean most people only define altruistic acts as being "good."

*Of course, the more jaded interpretation isn't "whatever I happen to agree with at the moment," but rather "whatever benefits me in some way." But I digress...

Agreed. Characters with laudable goals but questionable methods tend to be much more interesting than those who are Pure Good or Pure Evil. Bonus points if the audience finds themselves agreeing in many ways with the villain.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

IMHO "Evil is stupid" is simply the byproduct of a certain allegy to politics and ideology that's typical of mainstream fictional products (especially from USA).

An "Evil" character should have understable, if not empathetic, goals; should have a system of belief (even if alien and/or wicked) a strategy and a personality to face those matters.

But that's a lot of work (often not even protagonists check all those boxes) and if you do that too well you end up with a likeable antihero (especially if you put him against a poorly defined status quo) so the simple path is to have antagonists "that want to see the World burn... Just because" and call it a day.

That's not only stupid, but silly: kindergarden stories have more believable antagonists.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

In general the idea of being specifically "team evil" is problematic; wanting to do something because it is evil isn't completely unheard of, but most evil is just "I want X and I'm indifferent to the suffering I cause acquiring X" with the occasional "I want to cause suffering" (typically only in a limited group of people), and neither of those inherently creates a faction.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

While it is true a Sith cannot be in two places at once that can be applied to leaders, commanders, and any other high position. That is why if you want get and hold power you get you need to follow The Rules for Rulers:
1) Get Key supporters
2) Control the Treasure (this gets a little wonky when you "treasure" is built enterally on debt )
3) Minimize Key Supporters

Also the Sith canonically (at least before Disney nuked the Extended Universe from orbit) went to the two Sith system because thanks to their power for the sake of power, self-aggrandizement, holding power and coveting power that they kept becoming like the Star Trek Mirror Universe ie so backstab happy you wondered how on earth they got anything done.

As for "final destruction of the Sith" as The Philosophy of Kreia shows the Force will not let the Sith end because there must be "balance" — yin vs yang...forever.

Remember the Force effectively set up the Jedi with a Delphish prophesy that the Chosen one would bring "balance" to the Force. Anyone who stepped back would have said 'wait a minute what exactly does that mean?' but no the Jedi happy go off and set things in motion that effective led to their own destruction never considering this "balance" would cause them to fall as they were the "dominate" group. While The Old Republic || The Force is Conflict is a Sith view it fits better than what the Jedi claim the force is about.

Heck, in the original trilogy Palpatine got thrown into a power core of a Death Star that blew up and yet he shows up as the ultimate big bad in the sequels causing those familiar with the lore going 'what does it take to actually kill this guy?!'

Film Theory: The Uncomfortable Truth about the Jedi Order (Star Wars: Jedi are Evil) and The Jedi are Evil take hard looks at the Jedi and they don't come off as that good.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Er...
As much as I understand that Youtube has become a sort of global repository of human (un)knowledge some of your points are way off target:
- That Rulers video is based on an infamous book that tries to apply Kissinger's doctrine to Cuba and, being unable to make sense of it, just spew out nonsense about social healthcare and education (that are sold like a bad thing because again the point of view is the one of 'murikan imperialism: "it must be because of some mysterious Key holder! People are worthless!")

- Star Wars (and especially the extended canon) is not a good example for anything related to politics, ideology or philosophy: it's simply a moral story for 6 years old where protagonists and villains are color coded. Kotor 2 is another bad example because it was a game released with a lot of content cut or underdeveloped. If you want a look beyond the force duality there is something in "Star Wars Rebels" but make your own search since that come out way after i stopped to care about the IP.

I mean it's not difficult to find better examples for discussing believable "Evil Representation", have you read the news lately?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Except the color coding isn't consistent. Sure Vader wears black but the storm troopers wear white — something Slayers (anime) may have poked fun at when Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun points to the villain and rambles about how white is the color of heroes — then realizing the villain is decked out in white. Oops.

Video games always have that problem. You can overdevelop characters and content to the point it becomes contradictory and nearly nonsensical — FNAF and WoW both cases in point.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

No, minions are extremely useful to have around, from the perspective of a Sith Lord who actually behaved as one would reasonably expect someone permeated by the Dark Side to behave. In self-interested terms, one would expect a Sith Lord to train a Force-sensitive with enough skills to be useful, but not enough to be a threat. Probably such a Sith would trains several such, in secret from each other, to keep them from teaming up against him (though if he limited their training enough even that might not be an issue).

But to actually train an apprentice with everything you know, to actually try to make him as strong or stronger than you, goes against self-interest in a very profound way. The only way that makes sense is if the Sith Lord cares more about the continuation of the Sith, or making sure the Sith lineage is as strong as it can be, than he does about his own interests. Which cuts against the essence of the Dark Side.

There is a stage of evil past the absolute self-interested one, a stage only a handful of people ever display, and that's total nihilism, malicious hatred of everyone and everything including oneself. But that, too, doesn't lend itself to training apprentices to replace you the way the Sith supposedly do.

It's somewhat believable that Darth Bane might hate the Jedi so passionately that he's prepared to sacrifice himself through his Rule of Two to prepare the way for the Jedi's destruction down the road. Bane had, after all, tangled with the Jedi. But why would Darth 14th care about destroying the Jedi five centuries or so down the road? What does he get out of it?

Pure evil becomes self-destructive or at least self-obsessed. It's almost definitional.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

If you think of black vs. white, the color coding doesn't work. But if you go by the grayscale empire, the earth tone rebels, and the blue/green independents... it's still inconsistent, but less so.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

So, I'm not entirely up on all the lore (Legends or Canon... or even which is which), but... did any Sith actually do this? It seems like every instance I've read about, both master and apprentice bend the Rule of Two (masters tend to have another, hidden apprentice in the wings - like Palpatine grooming Anakin - while apprentices tend to have hidden apprentices of their own), the master invariably withholds some knowledge from the apprentice, and the master is surprised when the apprentice gets the upper hand and overthrows them. And of course every Sith ever wants to figure out immortality. Maybe some of the early Sith after Bane were willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause, but if feels like each of the others thought they were themselves the pinnacle of "Being a Sith," and their apprentices were simply useful tools... right up until the apprentice kills them and takes their place.

I realize I'm essentially arguing with my above statement, but one possibility would be if each master specifically goes after apprentices who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the eventual destruction of the Jedi... or apprentices who the master can groom to become willing to do so. I don't know what Maul's issue with the Jedi was (although he was certainly eager to fight them in The Phantom Menace, and it seemed like there was some personal beef there), but Dooku had largely severed ties with them*, and Anakin was impressionable enough - and chaffed enough against the Order's restrictions - to be readily groomed into someone who absolutely despised the Jedi.

*From what I've read, Dooku was obsessed with finding and defeating the Sith, and he left the Order on account of their unwillingness to entertain the thought the Sith were anything but extinct. It's never made any sense to me why, if he were so obsessed with defeating the Sith, he would opt to join them. But I digress...

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Some kind of 'destroy them from within' idea, and then he got in too deep, maybe?

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

They did enough for the Sith lineage to keep going, which is quite a bit. Yeah, a lot of 'em tried to bend the rules or get around them, but they all trained up an apprentice who was dangerous enough to take them down. That's the part that kind of self-contradicts.

Palpatine was an exception on that, he kept Vader (he thought) inferior to him in power as a policy. But the others more or less did it. Not always exactly along the lines of the Rule, but close enough for it to work. Some of them were disappointed that their apprentices seemed weak or indecisive.

Which feeds back toward the original theme of the discussion. Trying to portray 'evil for evil's sake' as a philosophy almost never works believably.

Tolkien knew that, for ex. Even his portrayal of the greatest evil of them all, Melkor, isn't a champion of Evil for Evil's sake. He's a champion of Melkor. Melkor fundamentally resents the fact that God is God, and Melkor is not. He is motivated by his own hatreds and lust, but he doesn't follow a philosophy of evil. He is evil, and originates evil into the universe, but not for its own sake. As his primal rebellion proceeds, he reaches a point where he wants to unmake everything, but there again, it's not evil for evil's sake that motivates him, but his own personal hatreds.

Sauron, even more so, is not motivated by 'for the evuls' as such. He wants power and control, Sauron wants to rule the world. Sauron is a champion of Sauron. Along the way, the natural effects of corruption have made him sadistic and lustful and destructive, but he doesn't strive to do eveil for the sake of evil. He strives to make himself King of the World.

Likewise, Sauron's allies ally with Mordor for familiar diplomatic and nationalistic, cultural, and economic reasons. The Haradrim don't stand with Sauron because they believe in being Evil, they ally with Sauron because they share a historic and pragmatic hostility to Gondor. Ditto the Dunlendings' alliance with Saruman against the Rohirrim, the Dunlendings allied with Isengard because they have warred with the Rohirrim in the past, and want to conquer the lands of Rohan. Perfectly conventional motives.

And of course some of the people fighting for Sauron were mercenaries being paid. Again, not Evil for Evil's sake.

There are various ways to play 'chaotic evil'. 'Evil for evil's sake' produces weird results.

Re: [DF] Dragonlance
 

Trope Talk: Pure Evil looks at such versions of Evil. Too often chaotic evil comes off as a Grimdark "hero" ie someone who "behaves like a 13 year old sociopath on a power trip."

As I mentioned using King and Country and other articles as references alignments work best in simplistic games where world building is borderline nonexistent with NPCs little more than info/rumor/quest dumps for the heroes.

The more complex the setting is the less functional alignment becomes with special pleading needed to make the chosen alignment even make sense. It also dodges the key question - where exactly are the boundaries between the alignments?